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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE REPRINTS 

Series I Number 5 



WEBSTER'S 
SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH 

AND THE 

SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850 



By HERBERT DARLING FOSTER 

Professor of History in Dartmouth College 



WITH FOREWORD BY 
NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON 

A uthor of 

Lincoln, an Account of Hit Personal Life, 

The Day of the Confederacy. 

etc. 



REPRINTED FROM THE 

Ammran Utetaroal 2fcttm» 

Vol. XXVII., No. 2 JANUARY, 1922 

Hanover, New Hampshire December, 1923 



- 









FOREWORD 

It is very curious that much of the history of the United States in 
the Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from the general 
memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of Webster's 
"Seventh of March speech" it is more than likely that nine out of ten 
Americans will have to cudgel their wits endeavoring to make quite 
sure just where among our political adventures that famous oration 
fits in. How many of us could pass a satisfactory examination on the 
antecedent train of events — the introduction in Congress of that Wilmot 
Proviso designed to make free soil of all the territory to be acquired 
in the Mexican War; the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the 
various demands for some sort of partition of the conquered area be- 
tween the sections, between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen 
intrusion of the gold seekers of California in 1849, and their un- 
authorized formation of a new state based on free labor ; the flaming up 
of Southern alarm, due not to one cause but to many, chiefly to the 
obvious fact that the free states were acquiring preponderance in Con- 
gress; the southern threats of secession; the fury of the Abolitionists 
demanding no concessions to the South, come what might ; and then, 
just when a rupture seemed inevitable, when Northern extremists and 
Southern extremists seemed about to snatch control of their sections, 
Webster's bold play to the moderates on both sides, his scheme of com- 
promise, announced in that famous speech on the seventh of March, 
1850? 

Most people are still aware that Webster was harshly criticized 
for making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the Abolitionists 
called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him any motive except the 
gaining of Southern support which might land him in the Presidency. 
At the time — so bitter was factional suspicion ! — this view gained many 
adherents. It has not lost them all, even now. 

This false interpretation of W r ebster turns on two questions — was 
there a real danger of secession in 1850? Was Webster sincere in de- 
riving his policy from a sense of national peril, not from self-interest? 
In the study which follows Professor Foster makes an adequate case 
for Webster, answering the latter question. The former he deals with 
in a general way establishing two things, the fact of Southern readiness 
to secede, the attendant fact that the South changed its attitude after 
the Seventh of March. His limits prevent his going on to weigh and 



4 Foreword 

appraise the sincerity of those fanatics who so furiously maligned 
Webster, who created the tradition that he had cynically sold out to the 
Southerners. Did they believe their own fiction? The question is a 
large one and involves this Other, did they know what was going on in 
the South? Did they realize that the Union on March 6, 1850. was 
actually at a parting of the ways, — that destruction or Civil War formed 
an imminent issue? 

Main of those who condemned compromise may be absolved from 
the charge of insincerity on the ground that they did not care whether 
the Union was preserved or not. Your true blue Abolitionist was very 
little of a materialist. Nor did he have primarily a crusading interest 
in the condition of the blacks, lie was introspective. He wanted the 
responsibility for slavery taken off his own soul. As later events were 
to prove, he was also pretty nearly a pacifist; war for the Union, pure 
and simple, made no appeal to him. It was part of Webster's insight 
that he divined this, that h : saw there was more pacifism than natural 
ardor in the North of 1850. saw that the precipitation of a war issue 
might spell the end of the United Republic. There fere, it was to cir- 
cumvent the Northern pacifists quite as much as to undermine the 
Southern expansionists that he offered compromise and avoided war. 

But what of those other detractors of Webster, those who were for 
the Union and yet believed he had sold out? Their one slim defense 
is the conviction that the South did not mean what it said, that Web- 
ster, had he dared offend the South, could have saved the day — from 
their point of view — without making concessions. Professor foster, 
always ready to do scrupulous justice, points out the dense ignorance in 
each section of the other, and there lets the matter rest. But what shall 
we say of a frame of mind, which in that moment of crisis, either did 
not read the Southern newspapers, or reading them and finding that 
tin- whole South was netted over by a systematically organized seces- 
sion propaganda made no attempt to gauge its strength, scoffed at it 
all as buncombe! Even later historians have done the same thing. In 
too main cases they have assumed that because the compromise was 
followed by an apparent collapse of the secession propaganda, the 
propaganda all along was without reality. We know toda) that the 
propaganda did not collapse. For strategic reasons it changed its 

policy. But it went on steadily growing and gaining ground until it 



Foreword 5 

triumphed in 1861. Webster, not his foolish opponents, gauged its 
strength correctly in 1850. 

The clew to what actuallly happened in 1850 lies in the course of 
such an ardent Southerner as, for example, Langdon Cheeves. Early 
in the year, he was a leading secessionist, but at the close of the year 
a leading anti-secessionist. His change of front, forced upon him by 
his own thinking about the situation was a bitter disappointment to 
himself. What animated him was a deep desire to take the whole 
South out of the Union. When, at the opening of the year, the North 
semed unwilling to compromise, he, and many another, thought their 
time had come. At the first Nashville Convention he advised a general 
secession, assuming that Virginia, "our premier state," would lead the 
movement and when Virginia later in the year swung over from se- 
cession to anti-secession, Cheeves reluctantly changed his policy. The 
compromise had not altered his views — broadly speaking it had not 
satisfied the Lower South — but it had done something still more event- 
ful, it had so affected the Upper South that a united secession became 
for a while impossible. Therefore, Cheeves and all like him— and they 
were the determining factor of the hour — resolved to bide their time, 
to wait until their propaganda had done its work, until the entire South 
should agree to go out together. Their argument, all preserved in print, 
but ignored by historians for sixty years thereafter, was perfectly 
frank. As one of them put it, in the face of the changed attitude of 
Virginia, "to secede now would be to secede from the South." 

Here is the aspect of Webster's great stroke that was so long ig- 
nored. He did not satisfy the whole South. He did not make friends 
for himself of Southerners generally. What he did do was to drive a 
wedge into the South, to divide it temporarily against itself. He ar- 
rayed the Upper South against the Lower and thus because of the ul- 
timate purposes of men like Cheeves, with their ambition to weld the 
South into a genuine unit, he forced them all to stand still, and thus 
to give Northern pacifism a chance to ebb, Northern nationalism a 
chance to develop. A comprehensive brief for the defense on this 
crucial point in the interpretation of American history, is Professor 
Foster's contribution. 

Nathaniel Wright Stephenson 



Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the 
Secession Movement, 1850 

THE moral earnestness and literary skill of Whittier, Lowell, Gar- 
rison, Phillips, and Parker have fixed in many minds the anti- 
slavery doctrine that Webster's 7th of March speech was "scan- 
dalous treachery", and Webster a man of little or no "moral sense", 
courage, or statesmanship. That bitter atmosphere, reproduced by 
Parton and von Hoist, was perpetuated a generation later by Lodge. 1 

Since 1900, over fifty publications throwing light on Webster and 
the Secession movement of 1850 have appeared, nearly a score con- 
taining fresh contemporary evidence. These twentieth-century his- 
torians — Garrison of Texas, Smith of Williams, Stephenson of Charles- 
ton and Yale, Van Tyne, Phillips, Fisher in his True Daniel Webster, 
or Ames, Hearon, and Cole in their monographs on Southern condi- 
tions — many of them born in one section and educated in another, 
brought into broadening relations with Northern and Southern investi- 
gators, trained in the modern historical spirit and freed by the mere 
lapse of time from much of the passion of slavery and civil war, have 
written with less emotion and more knowledge than the abolitionists, 
secessionists, or their disciples who preceded Rhodes. 

Under the auspices of the American Historical Association have 
appeared the correspondence of Calhoun, of Chase, of Toombs, 
Stephens, and Cobb, and of Hunter of Virginia. Van Tyne's Letters 
of Webster (1902), including hundreds hitherto unpublished, was 
further supplemented in the sixteenth volume of the "National Edi- 
tion" of Webster's Writings and Speeches (1903). These two editions 
contain, for 1850 alone, 57 inedited letters. 

Manuscript collections and newspapers, comparatively unknown 
to earlier writers, have been utilized in monographs dealing with the 
situation in 1850 in South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, 

1 Cf. Parton with Lodge on intellect, morals, indolence, drinking, 7th of 
March speech, Webster's favorite things in England; references, note 63, below. 



Webster's Seventh of March Speech 



North Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee, published by universities 
or historical societies. 

The cooler and matured judgments of men who knew Webster 
personally — Foote, Stephens, Wilson, Seward, and Whittier, in the 
last century; Hoar, Hale, Fisher, Hosmer, and Wheeler in recent 
years — modify their partizan political judgments of 1850. The new 
printed evidence is confirmed by manuscript material : 2,500 letters 
of the Greenough Collection available since the publication of the 
recent editions of Webster's letters and apparently unused by Web- 
ster's biographers ; and hundreds of still inedited Webster Papers in 
the New Hampshire Historical Society, and scattered in minor col- 
lections. 1 ' This mass of new material makes possible and desirable 
a re-examination of the evidence as to (1) the danger from the seces- 
sion movement in 1850; (2) Webster's change in attitude toward the 
disunion danger in February, 1850; (3) the purpose and character of 
his 7th of March speech; (4) the effects of his speech and attitude 
upon the secession movement. 



During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the 
Union was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the 
territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's de- 
mand for admission with a constitution prohibiting slave ry ; the 
Wilmot Proviso excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican ac- 
quisitions (Utah and New Mexico); the boundary dispute between 
Texas and New Mexico; the abolition of slave trade in the District 
of Columbia; and an effective fugitive slave law to replace that of 1793. 

The evidence for the steadily growing danger of secession until 
March, 1850, is no longer to be sought in Congressional speeches, but 
rather in the private letters of those men. Northern and Southern, 
who were the shrewdest political advisers of the South, and in the 
official acts of representative bodies of Southerners in local or state 
meetings, state legislatures, and the Nashville Convention. Even 

J In the preparation of this article, manuscripts have been used from the 
following collections: the Greenough, Hammond, and Clayton (Library of 
Congress); Winthrop and Appleton (Mass. Hist. Soc); Garrison (Boston Pub- 
lic Library); X. H. Hist Soc; Dartmouth College; Middletown (Conn.) Hist. 
Soc; Mrs. Alfred E. Wyman. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 



after the compromise was accepted in the South and the secessionists 
defeated in 1850-1851, the Southern states generally adopted the 
Georgia platform or its equivalent declaring that the Wilmot Proviso 
or the repeal of the fugitive slave law would lead the South to "resist 
even (as a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her 
to the Union". Southern disunion sentiment was not sporadic or a 
party matter; it was endemic. 

The disunion sentiment in the North was not general; but Garri- 
son, publicly proclaiming "I am an abolitionist and therefore for the 
dissolution of the Union", and his followers who pronounced "the 
Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell", ex- 
ercised a twofold effect far in excess of their numbers. In the North, 
abolitionists aroused bitter antagonism to slavery; in the South they 
strengthened the conviction of the lawfulness of slavery and the de- 
sirability of secession in preference to abolition. "The abolition ques- 
tion must soon divide us", a South Carolinian wrote his former 
principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it [dis- 
union] as a relief from incessant insult. I have been myself sur- 
prised at the unusual prevalence and depth of this feeling." 3 "The 
abolition movement", as Houston has pointed out, "prevented any 
considerable abatement of feeling, and added volume to the current 
which was to sweep the State out of the Union in I860." 4 South 
Carolina's ex-governor, Hammond, wrote Calhoun in December, 1849, 
"the conduct of the abolitionists in congress is daily giving it [disunion] 
powerful aid". "The sooner we can get rid of it [the union] the 
better." 5 The conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop 6 
of Massachusetts, that "Calhoun and his instruments are really 
solicitous to break up the Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own 
statement. 

Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all events 

3 Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University. MS. Dartmouth. 

4 Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further evidence of Web- 
ster's thesis that abolitionists had developed Southern reaction in Phillips, South 
in the Building of the Nation, IV, 401-403; and unpublished letters approving 
Webster's speech. 

'Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report (1899, vol II.), pp. 
1193-1194. 

6 To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, Polit. Hist. Slavery, I. 122; Winthrop 
MSS., Jan. 6, 1850. 



10 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 



to save the South, and convinced that there was "no time to lose", 
hoped "a decisive issue will be made with the North". In Februarv. 
1850, he wrote. "Disunion is the only alternative that is left us". 7 
At last supported by some sort of action in thirteen Southern states, 
and in nine states by appointment of delegates to his Southern Con- 
vention, he declared in the Senate, March 4. "the South is united 
against the Wilmot proviso, and has committed itself, bv solemn reso- 
lutions, to resist should it be adopted''. "The South will be forced 
to choose between abolition and secession." "The Southern States 
. . . cannot remain, as things now are. consistently with honor and 
safety, in the Union." 8 

That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun 
expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is con- 
firmed by the approval of Hammond and other observers ; by their judg- 
ment that "everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to make 
a speech in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor, that 
South Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation" ; 
and by the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists*' like Petigru 
and Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for southern 
separation", "disunion is the . . . predominant sentiment". "For 
arming the state $350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor." 
Had I convened the legislature two or three weeks before the regular 
meeting." adds the governor, "such was the excited state of the pub- 
lic mind at that time, I am convinced South Carolina would not now 
have been a member of the Union. The people are very far ahead of 
their leaders." Ample first-hand evidence of South Carolina's de- 
termination to secede in 1850 may be found in the Correspondence of 
Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the acts of the assembly, in the 
newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to resist at any and all hazards", 
and in the choice of resistance-men to the Nashville Convention and 
the state convention. This has been so convincingly set forth in Ames's 
Calhoun and the Secession Movement of 1850, and in Hamer's Seces- 

7 Calhoun. Corr., p. 781; cf. 7<4-766, 778, 780, 783-784. 

mg. Globe, XXI. -451-455. 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's attitude. 
Ann. Calhoun, pp. 6 7: Stephenson, in Vole Review, 1919, p. 216; Newbury in 
South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259; Hamcr, Secession Movement in South Caro- 
lina. 1847 - 1852, pp. 49-54. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 11 

$ion Movement in South Carolina, 1847 — 1852, that there is need of 
very few further illustrations. 9 

That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to 
the Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accept- 
ing the compromise in 1850 — 1851 ; and the Virginia legislature tact- 
fully urged South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections 
in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to 
accept the Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where 
the voters followed Webster's supporter, Foote. 10 That Petigru was 
right in maintaining that South Carolina merely abandoned imme- 
diate and separate secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote 
of the South Carolina State Convention of 1852, 11 that the state was 
amply justified "in dissolving at once all political connection with 
her co-States", but refrained from this "manifest right of self-govern- 
ment from considerations of expediency only". 12 

In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhoun, 
recommended the holding of a Southern convention at Nashville in 
June, 1850, to "adopt some mode of resistance". The "Resolutions" 
declared the Wilmot Proviso "such a breach of the federal compact 
as . . . will make it the duty ... of the slave-holding states to treat 
the non-slave-holding states as enemies". The "Address" recom- 
mended "all the assailed states to provide in the last resort for their 
separate welfare by the formation of a compact and a Union". "The 
object of this [Nashville Convention] is to familiarize the public 
mind with the idea of dissolution", rightly judged the Richmond 
Whig and the Lynchburg Virginian. 

Radical resistance men controlled the legislature and "cordially 
approved" the disunion resolution and address, chose delegates to the 
Nashville Convention, appropriated $20,000 for their expenses and 
$200,000 for "necessary measures for protecting the state ... in 
the event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso", etc. 13 These ac- 

9 Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report (1899, vol. II), pp. 
1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188, 217; Coleman, Crittenden, 
I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54, 82-83; Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Clai- 
borne, Quitman, II. 36-39. 

10 Hearon, Miss, and the Compromise of 1850, p. 209. 

11 A letter to Webster, Oct. 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows the strength 
of Calhoun's secession ideas. Hamer, p. 125, quotes part. 

12 Hamer, p. 142 ; Hearon, p. 220. 

"Mar. 6, 1850. Laws (Miss.), pp. 521-526. 



12 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 



tions of Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of 
March speech mark approximately the peak of the secession movement. 

Governor Quitman, in response to public demand, called the legis- 
lature and proposed "to recommend the calling of a regular conven- 
tion . . . with full power to annul the federal compact". "Having 
no hope of an effectual remedy . . . but in separation from the 
Northern States, my views of state action will look to secession." 14 
The legislature supported Quitman's and Jefferson Davis's plans for 
resistance, censured Foote's support of the Compromise, and provided 
for a state convention of delegates. 15 

Even the Mississippi "Unionists" adopted the six standard points 
generally accepted in the South which would justify resistance. "And 
this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the New 
York Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that Quit- 
man's message was treasonable and that there was ample evidence 
of a plot to dissolve the Union and form a Southern confederacy. 
Their programme was adopted by the State Convention the following 
year." 1 The radical Mississippians reiterated Calhoun's constitutional 
guarantees of sectional equality and non-interference with slavery, 
and declared for a Southern convention with power to recommend 
"secession from the Union and the formation of a Southern con- 
federacy". 17 

"The people of Mississippi seemed . . . determined to defend 
their equality in the Union, or to retire from it by peaceful seces- 
sion. Had the issue been pressed at the moment when the excitement 
was at its highest point, an isolated and very serious movement might 
have occurred, which South Carolina, without doubt, would have 
promptly responded to." 18 

In Georgia, evidence as to "which way the wind blows" was 
received by the Congressional trio, Alexander Stephens, Toombs, and 
Cobb, from trusted observers at home. "The only safety of the South 
from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the 

"Claiborne, Quitman, II. 37; Hearon, p. 161 n. 
"Hearon, pp. 180-181; Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52. 
"Nov. Id. 1850, Hearon, pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212 
" Dec. 10, Southern Rights Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187. 
"Claiborne, Quitman, II. 52. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 13 

Union." Only one democrat was found justifying Cobb's opposition 
to Calhoun and the Southern Convention. 19 

Stephens himself, anxious to "stick to the Constitutional Union", 
reveals in confidential letters to Southern Unionists the rapidly grow- 
ing danger of disunion. "The feeling among the Southern members 
for a dissolution of the Union ... is becoming much more general." 
"Men are now [December, 1849] beginning to talk of it seriously 
who twelve months ago hardly permitted themselves to think of it." 
"Civil war in this country better be prevented if it can be." After 
a month's "farther and broader view", he concluded, "the crisis is 
not far ahead ... a dismemberment of this Republic I now consider 
inevitable." 20 

On February 8, 1850, the Georgia legislature appropriated $30,000 
for a state convention to consider measures of redress, and gave warn- 
ing that anti-slavery aggressions would "induce us to contemplate the 
possibility of a dissolution". 21 "I see no prospect of a continuance of 
this Union long", wrote Stephens two days later. 22 

Speaker Cobb's advisers warned him that "the predominant feel- 
ing of Georgia" was "equality or disunion", and that "the destruc- 
tives" were trying to drive the South into disunion. "But for your 
influence, Georgia would have been more rampant for dissolution 
than South Carolina ever was." "S. Carolina will secede, but we can 
and must put a stop to it in Georgia." 23 

Public opinion in Georgia, which had been "almost ready for 
immediate secession", was reversed only after the passage of the 
Compromise and by means of a strenuous campaign against the Seces- 
sionists which Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb were obliged to return 
to Georgia to conduct to a successful issue. 24 Yet even the Unionist 
Convention of Georgia, elected by this campaign, voted almost unani- 
mously "the Georgia platform" already described, of resistance, even 

19 July 1 1849 Corr., p. 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report, 1911, vol. 
II.). 

20 Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political History of Slavery, 
1 121. 

"Latvs (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410. 

22 Johnston, Stephens, p. 247. 

23 Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see Brooks, in Miss. 
Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289. 

21 Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 163-166. 



14 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

to disruption, against the Wilmot Proviso, the repeal of the fugitive 
slave law, and the other measures generally selected for reprobation 
in the South.-"' "Even the existence of the Union depended upon the 
settlement*'; "we would have resisted by our arms if the wrong [Wil- 
mot Proviso] had been perpetuated", were Stephens's later judgments. 26 
It is to be remembered that the Union victory in Georgia was based 
upon the Compromise and that Webster's share in "strengthening the 
friends of the Union" was recognized by Stephens. 

The disunion movement manifested also dangerous strength in 
Virginia and Alabama, and showed possibilities of great danger in 
Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland. Missouri, 
Texas, and Arkansas. The majority of the people may not have 
favored secession in 1850 any more than in 1860; but the leaders 
could and did carry most of the Southern legislatures in favor of 
uniting for resistance. 

The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in Ala- 
bama under Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate impos- 
sible demands so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker at Nash- 
ville "ridiculed Webster's assertion that the Union could not be dis- 
solved without bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's speech. Garnett 
of Virginia published a frank advocacy of a Southern Confederacy, 
repeatedly reprinted, which Clay declared "the most dangerous pam- 
phlet he had ever read".- 7 Virginia, in providing for delegates to 
the Nashville Convention, announced her readiness to join her "sister 
slave states" for "mutual defence". She later acquiesced in the Com- 
promise, but reasserted that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat 
restoration of peaceful sentiments". 28 

In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico 
boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing 

"Ames, Documents, pp. 271-272: Hearon, p. 190. 

"1854, Amer. Hist. Review, VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston, Stephens, pp. 321- 
322; infra, pp. 267, 268. 

Hammond MSS., Jan 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12; Ambler. 
Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 24<>; N. V. Tribune, June 14; M. R. H. Garnett 
Union Past and Future, published between Jan. 24 and Mar. 7. Alabama: 
Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p. 281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. 247-249, 481; 
Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; Cobb, Corr., pp. 193- 
195, 207. President Tyler of the College of William and Mary kindly furnished 
evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. Garnett, in Southern Literary Mes- 
senger, I. 255. 

"Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851, p. 201. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 15 

to send. Stephens frankly repeated Quitman's threats of Southern 
armed support of Texas. 29 Cobb, Henderson of Texas, Duval of 
Kentucky, Anderson of Tennessee, and Goode of Virginia expressed 
similar views as to the "imminent cause of danger to the Union from 
Texas". The collision was avoided because the more statesmanlike 
attitude of Webster prevailed rather than the "soldier's" policy of 
Taylor. 

The border states held a critical position in 1850, as they did in 
1860. "If they go for the Southern movement we shall have dis- 
union." "Everything is to depend from this day on the course of 
Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri." 30 Webster's conciliatory Union 
policy, in harmony with that of border state leaders, like Bell of 
Tennessee, Benton of Missouri, Clay and Crittenden of Kentucky, 
enabled Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to stand by the Union and 
refuse to send delegates to the Nashville Convention. 

The attitude of the Southern states toward disunion may be fol- 
lowed closely in their action as to the Nashville Convention. Nine 
Southern states approved the Convention and appointed delegates 
before June, 1850, six during the critical month preceding Webster's 
speech: Georgia, February 6, 8; Texas and Tennessee, February 11; 
Virginia, February 12; Alabama, just before the adjournment of the 
legislature, February 13 ; Mississippi, March 5, 6. 31 Every one of 
the nine seceded in 1860-1861; the border states (Maryland, Ken- 
tucky, Missouri) which kept out of the Convention in 1850 likewise 
kept out of secession in 1861 ; and only two states which seceded in 
1861 failed to join the Southern movement in 1850 (North Carolina 
and Louisiana). This significant parallel between the action of the 
Southern states in 1850 and in 1860 suggests the permanent strength 
of the secession movement of 1850. Moreover, the alignment of 
leaders was strikingly the same in 1850 and 1860. Those who headed 
the secession movement in 1850 in their respective states were among 
the leaders of secession in 1860 and 1861 : Rhett in South Carolina ; 

29 Stephens, Corr., p. 192; Globe, XXII. II. 1208. 

30 Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 23. 

31 South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p. 240, and the following Lazvs or Acts, all 
1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410. 122; Texas, pp. 93-94, 171; Tennessee, p. 572 
{Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 161) ; Mississippi, pp. 
526-528; Virginia, p. 233; Alabama, Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25. 



16 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

\ancey in Alabama; Jefferson Davis and Brown in Mississippi; 

Garnett, Goodc, and Hunter in Virginia ; Johnston in Arkansas ; 
Clingman in North Carolina. On the other hand, nearly all the men 
who in 1850 favored the Compromise, in 1860 either remained Union 
nun, like Crittenden, Houston of Texas, Sharkey, Lieber, Petigru, 
and Provost Kennedy of Baltimore, or, like Stephens, Morehead. and 
Foote, vainly tried to restrain secession. 

In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention — Mis- 
souri, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana — there 
was much sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the 
governor's proposal to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs. 3 " 
"Missouri", in case of the Wilmot Proviso, "will be found in hearty 
co-operation with the slave-holding states for mutual protection against 
. . . Northern fanaticism", her legislature resolved. 3;i Missouri's 
instructions to her senators were denounced as "disunion in their 
object"' by her own Senator Benton. The Maryland legislature re- 
solved, February 26: "Maryland will take her position with her 
Southern sister states in the maintenance of the constitution with all 
its compromises." The Whig senate, however, prevented sanction- 
ing of the convention and sending of delegates. Florida's governor 
wrote the governor of South Carolina that Florida would co-operate 
with Virginia and South Carolina "in any measure in defense of our 
common Constitution and sovereign dignity". "Florida has resolved 
to resist to the extent of revolution", declared her representative in 
Congress, March 5. Though the Whigs did not support the move- 
ment, five delegates came from Florida to the Nashville Convention. 34 

In Kentucky. Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion'' 
and "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern 
Union governor. 3 "' Crittenden's changing attitude reveals the grow- 
ing peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's and Clay's plans. 
By April, Crittenden recognized that "the Union is endangered", 
"the case . . . rises above ordinary rules", "circumstances have 
rather changed". He reluctantly swung from Taylor's plan of deal- 

■ White, Miss. Valley Hist. .Issue, III. 283. 
"Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24. 

"Hamer. p. 40; ef. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162; Cong. G 
Mar. 5. 

** Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 17 



ing with California alone, to the Clay and Webster idea of settling 
the "whole controversy". 30 Representative Morehead wrote Crit- 
tenden, "The extreme Southern gentlemen would secretly deplore 
the settlement of this question. The magnificence of a Southern Con- 
federacy . . . is a dazzling allurement." Clay like Webster, saw "the 
alternative, civil war". 37 

In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the 
Union; but the extremists — typified by Clingman, the public meeting 
at Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier — 
reveal the presence of a dangerously aggressive body "with a settled 
determination to dissolve the Union" and frankly "calculating the 
advantages of a Southern Confederacy." Southern observers in this 
state reported that "the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law or the 
abolition of slavery in the District will dissolve the Union". The 
North Carolina legislature acquiesced in the Compromise but coun- 
selled retaliation in case of anti-slavery aggressions. 38 Before the 
assembling of the Southern convention in June, every one of the 
Southern states, save Kentucky, had given some encouragement to 
the Southern movement, and Kentucky had given warning and pro- 
posed a compromise through Clay. 39 

Nine Southern states — Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Ala- 
bama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee — sent 
about 176 delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively 
harmless outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier historians 
to underestimate the danger of the resistance movement in February 
and March when backed by legislatures, newspapers, and public opin- 
ion, before the effect was felt of the death of Calhoun and Taylor, 
and of Webster's support of conciliation. Stephens and the Southern 
Unionists rightly recognized that the Nashville Convention "will be 
the nucleus of another sectional assembly". "A fixed alienation of 
feeling will be the result." "The game of the destructives is to use the 

36 Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369. 

37 Smith, History of Slavery, I. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter, in Curtis, Web- 
ster, II, 584-585. 

38 Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I. 200-205, 311; 
National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp. 217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina 
on the Eve of Secession," in Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report (1910), pp. 
167-177. 

39 Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283. 



18 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

Missouri Compromise principle [as demanded by the Nashville Con- 
vention] as a medium of defeating all adjustments and then to . . . in- 
furiate the South and drive her into measures that must end in dis- 
union." "All who go to the Xashville Convention are ultimately to 
fall into that position." This view is confirmed by Judge Warner and 
other observers in Georgia and by the unpublished letters of Tucker. 4 " 
"Let the Nashville Convention be held", said the Columbus, Georgia. 
Sentinel, "and let the undivided voice of the South go forth . . . 
declaring our determination to resist even to civil war." 41 The speech 
of Rhett of South Carolina, author of the convention's "Address", 
"frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of disunion". "If every Southern 
State should quail . . . South Carolina alone should make the issue." 
"The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and I believe the opinion 
of a large portion of the Southern people is. that the Union cannot be 
made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission to Webster. 4 - 

The influence of the Compromise is brought out in the striking 
change in the attitude of Senator Foote, and of Judge Sharkey of 
Mississippi, the author of the radical "Address" of the preliminary 
Mississippi Convention, and chairman of both this and the Nashville 
Convention. After the Compromise measures were reported in May 
by Clay and Webster's committee. Sharkey became convinced that the 
Compromise should be accepted and so advised Foote. Sharkey also 
visited Washington and helped to pacify the rising storm by "sug- ■ 
gestions to individual Congressmen". 43 In the Nashville Convention. 
Sharkey therefore exercised a moderating influence as chairman and 
refused to sign its disunion address. Convinced that the Compromise 
met essential Southern demands. Sharkey urged that "to resist it 
would be to dismember the Union". He therefore refused to call a 
second meeting of the Nashville Convention. For this change in 
position he was bitterly criticized by Jefferson Davis. 44 Foote recog- 
nized the "emergency" at the same time that Webster did, and on 
February 25, proposed his committee of thirteen to report some 

•Johnston, Stephens, i>. 247; C»rr.. pp. 186, 193, 194. 206-207: Hammond 
MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8. 

41 Ames, Calhoun, p. 26. 

"Webster, Writings and Speeches, X. 1(>1-1(.2. 

"Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., art. "Sharkey." 

"Hearon, pp 124. 171-174. Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.), Nov. 22, 
1851. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 19 

"scheme of compromise". Parting company with Calhoun, March 5, 
on the thesis that the South could not safely remain without new 
"constitutional guarantees", Foote regarded Webster's speech as "un- 
answerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as to 
Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt consideration 
of California. The importance of Foote's influence in turning the tide 
in Mississippi, through his pugnacious election campaign, and the 
significance of his judgment of the influence of Webster and his speech 
have been somewhat overlooked, partly perhaps because of Foote's 
swashbuckling characteristics. 45 

That the Southern convention movement proved comparatively 
innocuous in June is due in part to confidence inspired by the con- 
ciliatory policy of one outstanding Northerner, Webster. "Webster's 
speech", said Winthrop, "has knocked the Nashville Convention into 
a cocked hat." 46 "The Nashville Convention has been blown by your 
giant effort to the four winds." 47 "Had you spoken out before this, 
I verily believe the Nashville Convention had not been thought of. 
Your speech has disarmed and quieted the South." 48 Webster's speech 
caused hesitation in the South. "This has given courage to all who 
wavered in their resolution or who were secretly opposed to the 
measure [Nashville Convention]." 49 

Ames cites nearly a score of issues of newspapers in Mississippi, 
South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia 
reflecting the change in public opinion in March. Even some of the 
radical papers referred to the favorable effect of Webster's speech 
and "spirit" in checking excitement. "The Jackson (Mississippi) 
Southron had at first supported the movement [for a Southern Con- 
vention], but by March it had grown lukewarm and before the Con- 
vention assembled, decidedly opposed it. The last of May it said, 
'not a Whig paper in the State approves'." In the latter part of March, 
not more than a quarter of sixty papers from ten slave-holding states 

"Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, 712; infra, p. 268. 

46 MSS., Mar. 10. 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXVII. — 18. 

47 Anstell, Bethlehem, May 21, Greenough Collection. 

48 Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, ibid. 

49 Goode, Hunter Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report (1916, vol. II.), 
p. 111. 



20 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

took decided ground fur a Southern Convention. 60 The Mississippi 
Free Trader tried to check the growing support of the Compromise, 
by claiming that Webster's speech lacked Northern backing. A South 
Carolina pamphlet cited the Massachusetts opposition to Webster as 
proof of the political strength of abolition. 51 

The newer, day by day, first-hand evidence, in print and manu- 
script, shows the Union in serious danger, with the culmination during 
the three weeks preceding Webster's speech ; with a moderation during 
March ; a growing readiness during the summer to await Congressional 
action ; and slow acquiescence in the Compromise measures of Sep- 
tember, but with frank assertion on the part of various Southern states 
of the right and duty of resistance if the compromise measures were 
violated. Even in December, 1850, Dr. Alexander of Princeton found 
sober Virginians fearful that repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act would 
throw Virginia into the Southern movement and that South Carolina 
"by some rash act" would precipitate "the crisis". "All seem to re- 
gard bloodshed as the inevitable result." 52 

To the judgments and legislative acts of Southerners already 
quoted, may be added some of the opinions of men from the North. 
Erving, the diplomat, wrote from New York. "The real danger is in 
the fanatics and disunionists of the North". "I see no salvation but 
in the total abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso." Edward Everett, 
on the contrary, felt that "unless some southern men of influence have 
courage enough to take grounds against the extension of slavery and in 
favor of abolition ... we shall infallibly separate". 53 

A Philadelphia editor who went to Washington to learn the real 
sentiments of the Southern members, reported February 1, that if 
the Wilmot Proviso were not given up, ample provision made for 
fugitive slaves and avoidance of interference with slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, the South would secede, though this was not gen- 
erally believed in the North. "The North must decide whether she 
would have the Wilmot Proviso without the Union or the Union with- 
out the Wilmot Proviso." 64 

"Ames, Calhoun, pp. 24-27. 

"Hearon, pp. 120-123; Anonymous. Letter ,»i Southern il rotn/s . . . in 

Reply to Grayson (Charleston, 1850). 

■ Letters, EI. Ill, 121, 127. 

■ Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16. Feb. 7. 

" Philadelphia Bulletin, in McMaster, VIII. 15. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 21 

In answer to inquiries from the Massachusetts legislature as to 
whether the Southern attitude was "bluster" or "firm Resolve", 
Winthrop wrote, "the country has never been in more serious exigency 
than at present". "The South is angry, mad." "The Union must be 
saved ... by prudence and forbearance." "Most sober men here 
are apprehensive that the end of the Union is nearer than they have 
ever before imagined." Winthrop's own view on February 19 had been 
corroborated by General Scott, who wrote him four days earlier, "God 
preserve the Union is my daily prayer, in and out of church". 55 

Webster, however, as late as February 14, believed that there was 
no "serious danger". February 16, he still felt that "if, on our side, 
we keep cool, things will come to no dangerous pass". 56 But within 
the next week, three acts in Washington modified Webster's optimism: 
the filibuster of Southern members, February 18 ; their triumph in con- 
ference, February 19; their interview with Taylor about February 23. 

On February 18, under the leadership of Stephens, the Southern 
representatives mustered two-thirds of the Southern Whigs and a 
majority from every Southern state save Maryland for a successful 
series of over thirty filibustering votes against the admission of Cali- 
fornia without consideration of the question of slavery in New Mexico 
and Utah. So indisputable was the demonstration of Southern power 
to block not only the President's plan but all Congressional legislation, 
that the Northern leaders next day in conference with Southern repre- 
sentatives agreed that California should be admitted with her free 
constitution, but that in New Mexico and Utah government should be 
organized with no prohibition of slavery and with power to form, in 
respect to slavery, such constitutions as the people pleased — agree- 
ments practically enacted in the Compromise. 57 

The filibuster of the 18th of February, Mann described as "a 
revolutionary proceeding". Its alarming effect on the members of 
the Cabinet was commented upon by the Boston Advertiser, February 
19. The New York Tribune, February 20, recognized the determina- 
tion of the South to secede unless the Missouri Compromise line were 
extended to the Pacific. February 22, the Springfield Republican de- 

56 Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, 6. 
68 Writings and Speeches, XVI. 533 ; XVIII. 355. 

"Stephens, War between the States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong. Globe, XXI. I. 
375-384. 



22 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

clared that "if the Union cannot be preserved" without the extension 
of slavery, "we allow the tie of Union to be severed". It was on this 
day, that Webster decided "to make a Union speech and discharge a 
clear conscience". 

That same week ( apparently February 23 ) occurred the famous 
interview of Stephens and Toombs with Taylor which convinced the 
President that the Southern movement "means disunion". This was 
Taylor's judgment expressed to Weed and Hamlin, "ten minutes 
after the interview". A week later the President seemed to Horace 
Mann to be talking like a child about his plans to levy an embargo 
and blockade the Southern harbors and "save the Union". Taylor 
was ready to appeal to arms against "these Southern men in Congress 
[who] are trying to bring on civil war" in connection with the critical 
Texas boundary question. 58 

On this 23d of February, Greeley, converted from his earlier and 
characteristic optimism, wrote in his leading editorial: "instead of 
scouting or ridiculing as chimerical the idea of a Dissolution of the 
Union, we firmly believe that there are sixty members of Congress 
who this day desire it and are plotting to effect it. We have no 
doubt the Nashville Convention will be held and that the leading pur- 
pose of its authors is the separation of the slave states . . . with 
the formation of an independent Confederacy." "This plot ... is 
formidable." He warned against "needless provocation" which would 
"supply weapons to the Disunionists". A private letter to Greeley 
from Washington, the same day, says: "H — is alarmed and con- 
fident that blood will be spilt on the floor of the House. Many mem- 
bers go to the House armed every day. W— is confident that Dis- 
unionism is now inevitable. He knows intimately nearly all the 
Southern members, is familiar with their views and sees the letters 
that reach them from their constituents. He says the most ultra are 
well backed up in their advices from home." 59 

~~ "Thurlow Weed Life II. 177-178, 180-181 (Gen. Pleasanton's confirm 
letter) Wilson Slave Power, II. 249. Both corroborated by Hamlme 
Rhodes I 134 Stephens's letters. N. Y. Herald. July 13, Aug. 8. 1876. denying 
threatening language used by Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify evidence of 
Taylor's attitude. Mann. Life, p. 292. Private Washington letter, Feb. 23. 
ting interview, \. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25. 
"Weekly Tribune. Mar. 2, reprinted from Daily. Feb. 27. Cf. Washington 
tonal Intelligencer, Feb. 21. quoting: Richmond Enquirer; Wilmington Com- 
•/,• Columbia Telegraph. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 23 

The same February 23, the Boston Advertiser quoted the Wash- 
ington correspondence of the Journal of Commerce : "excitement per- 
vades the whole South, and Southern members say that it has gone 
beyond their control, that their tone is moderate in comparison with 
that of their people". "Persons who condemn Mr. Clay's resolutions 
now trust to some vague idea that Mr. Webster can do something 
better." "If Mr. Webster has any charm by the magic influence of 
which he can control the ultraism of the North and of the South, he 
cannot too soon try its effects." "If Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri 
go for the Southern movement, we shall have disunion and as much 
of war as may answer the purposes either of Northern or Southern 
fanaticism." On this Saturday, February 23, also, "several Southern 
members of Congress had a long and interesting interview with Mr. 
Webster". "The whole subject was discussed and the result is, that 
the limitations of a compromise have been examined, which are satis- 
factory to our Southern brethren. This is good news, and will sur- 
round Mr. Webster's position with an uncommon interest." 60 

"Webster is the only man in the Senate who has a position which 
would enable him to present a plan which would be carried", said 
Pratt of Maryland. 61 The National Intelligencer, which had hitherto 
maintained the safety of the Union, confessed by February 21 that 
"the integrity of the Union is at some hazard", quoting Southern evi- 
dence of this. On February 25, Foote, in proposing to the Senate a 
committee of thirteen to report some scheme of compromise, gave it 
as his conclusion from consultation with both houses, that unless some- 
thing were done at once, power would pass from Congress. 

II. 

It was under these highly critical circumstances that Webster, on 
Sunday, February 24, the day on which he was accustomed to dine 
with his unusually well-informed friends, Stephens, Toombs, Clay and 
Hale, wrote to his only surviving son: 

I am nearly broken down with labor and anxiety. I know not how 
to meet the present emergency, or with what weapons to beat down the 
Northern and Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes. If 
you can possibly leave home, I want you to be here, a day or two 

80 New York Herald, Feb. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 26. 
61 Tribune, Feb. 25. 



24 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

before I speak ... 1 have poor spirits and little courage. Non 
sum quails cram."- 

Mr. Lodge's account of this critical February period shows igno- 
rance not only of the letter of February 24, but of the real situation. 
He relies upon von Hoist instead of the documents, then misquotes 
him on a point of essential chronology, and from unwarranted as- 
sumptions and erroneous and incomplete data draws unreliable con- 
clusions. Before this letter of February 24 and the new cumulative 
evidence of the crisis, there falls to the ground the sneer in .Mr. 
Lodge's question, "if [Webster's] anxiety was solely of a public na- 
ture, why did it date from March 7 when, prior to that time, there 
was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards?" Webster was 
anxious before the 7th of March, as so many others were. North and 
South, and his extreme anxiety appears in the letter of February 24, 
as well as in repeated later utterances. No one can read through the 
letters of Webster without recognizing that he had a genuine anxiety 
for the safety of the Union ; and that neither in his letters nor else- 
where is there evidence that in his conscience he was "ill at ease" or 
"his mind not at peace". Here as elsewhere, Mr. Lodge's biography, 
written over forty years ago, reproduces anti-slavery bitterness and 
ignorance of facts (pardonable in 1850) and seriously misrepresents 
Webster's character and the situation in that vear. 03 

By the last week in February and the first in March, the peak of 
the secession movement was reached. Never an alarmist, Webster, 
like others who loved the Union, become convinced during this critical 
last week in February of an "emergency". He determined "to make 
a Union Speech and discharge a clear conscience." "1 made up my 
mind to risk myself on a proposition for a general pacification. I 
resolved to push my skiff from the shore alone." "We are in a crisis." 
he wrote June 2, "if conciliation makes no progress." "It is a great 
emergency, a greal exigency, that the country is placed in", he said in 
the Senate, June 17. "We have." he wrote in October, "gone through 
the most important crisis which has occurred since the foundation of 
the government." A year later he added at Buffalo, "if we had not 
settled these agitating questions [by the Compromise] ... in my 



"Writings <iwV Speeches, XVI. 534. 

"Lodge's reproduction oi Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195, 325-326, 349, 353, 
356, M)0. Other errors in Lodge's Webster, pp. 45. 314. 322. 328, 329-330, 352. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 25 

opinion, there would have been civil war". In Virginia, where he had 
known the situation even better, he declared, "I believed in my con- 
science that a crisis was at hand, a dangerous, a fearful crisis". 64 

Rhodes's conclusion that there was "little danger of an overt act 
of secession while General Taylor was in the presidential chair" was 
based on evidence then incomplete and is abandoned by more recent 
historians. It is moreover significant that, of the speeches cited by 
Rhodes, ridiculing the danger of secession, not one was delivered 
before Webster's speech. All were uttered after the danger had been 
lessened by the speeches and attitude of Clay and Webster. Even 
such Northern anti-slavery speeches illustrated danger of another 
sort. Hale of New Hampshire "would let them go" rather than sur- 
render the rights threatened by the fugitive slave bill. 65 Giddings 
in the very speech ridiculing the danger of disunion said, "when they 
see fit to leave the Union, I would say to them 'Go in peace' "." 
Such utterances played into the hands of secessionists, strengthening 
their convictions that the North despised the South and would not 
fight to keep her in the Union. 

It is now clear that in 1850 as in 1860 the average Northern sen- 
ator or anti-slavery minister or poet was ill-informed or careless as 
to the danger of secession, and that Webster and the Southern Union- 
ists were well-informed and rightly anxious. Theodore Parker il- 
lustrated the bitterness that befogs the mind. He concluded that 
there was no danger of dissolution because "the public funds of the 
United States did not go down one mill." The stock market might, 
of course, change from many causes, but Parker was wrong as to 
the facts. An examination of the daily sales of United States bonds 
in New York, 1849-1850, shows that the change, instead of being 
"not one mill," as Parker asserted, was four or five dollars during this 
period ; and what change there was, was downward before Webster's 
speech and upward thereafter. 67 

We now realize what Webster knew and feared in 1849-1850. 
"If this strife between the South and the North goes on, we shall 



84 Writings and Speeches. XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, 568; X. 116; Curtis, 
Life, II. 596; XIII. 434. 

66 Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, XXII. II. 1063. 
68 Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562. 

67 U. S. Bonds (1867). About 112-113, Dec, Jan., Feb., 1850; "inactive" be- 
fore Webster's speech; "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to 117, 119, May; 116-117 
after Compromise. 



26 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

have war, and who is ready for that?" "There would have been a 
Civil War if the Compromise had not passed." The evidence con- 
firms Thurlow Weed's mature judgment: "the country had every ap- 
pearance of being on the eve of a Revolution." On February 28. 
Everett recognized that "the radicals at the South have made up their 
minds to separate, the catastrophe seems to be inevitable". 69 

On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an 
honest, truth-telling speech, and a Union speech" 6 ** The Washington 
correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported that Wehster will 
"take a large view of the state of things and advocate a straight- 
forward course of legislation essentially such as the President has 
recommended". "To this point public sentiment has been gradually 
converging." "It will tend greatly to confirm opinion in favor of 
this course should it meet with the decided concurrence of Mr. Web- 
ster." The attitude of the plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of 
Beaver, Pennsylvania, on the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as vou 
can, do it as a bold and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the 
North and South and preserve the Union". "Offer, Mr. Wehster. a 
liberal compromise to the South." On March 4 and 5. Calhoun's 
Senate speech reasserted that the South, no longer safe in the Union, 
possessed the right of peaceable secession. On the 6th of March. 
Webster went over the proposed speech of the next morning with his 
son, Fletcher. Edward Curtis, and Peter Harvey. r " 

III. 
It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing evidence. 
public and private utterances, ami acts in Southern legislature^ and 
in Congress, that Webster made his Union speech on the 7th of 
March. The purpose and character of the speech arc rightly indi- 
cated by its title. "The Constitution and the Union", and by the 
significant dedication to the people of Massachusetts: "Necessity 
compels me to speak true rather than pleasing things." "I should 
indeed like t < » please you: but 1 prefer to save you. whatever he your 

** K. P. Wheeler, Sixty Years of American Life, p. 6; cf. Webster's Buffalo 
Speech, Curtis, Life, II. 576; Weed. Autobioqraphy, p. 596. 

"Winthrop MSS 

"'H'riiimii and Speeches, XVI. 534-5. 

"Webster to Harvey, Apr. 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc., adds 
Fletcher's name. Received through the kindness of Professor George M. Dutcher. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 27 



attitude toward me." 71 The malignant charge that this speech was 
"a bid for the presidency" was long ago discarded, even by Lodge. 
It unfortunately survives in text-books more concerned with "atmos- 
phere" than with truth. The modern investigator finds no evidence 
for it and every evidence against it. Webster was both too proud 
and too familiar with the political situation, North and South, to 
make such a monstrous mistake. The printed or manuscript letters 
to or from Webster in 1850 and 1851 show him and his friends 
deeply concerned over the danger to the Union, but not about the 
presidency. There is rarest mention of the matter in letters by per- 
sonal or political friends ; none by Webster, so far as the writer has 
observed. 

If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in 
1850 as now known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches 
and private letters, one finds his position and arguments on the 7th 
of March in harmony with his attitude toward Union and slavery, 
and with the law and the facts. Frankly reiterating both his earlier 
view of slavery "as a great moral, political and social evil" and his 
lifelong devotion to the Union and its constitutional obligations, Web- 
ster took national, practical, courageous grounds. On the fugitive 
slave bill and the Wilmot Proviso, where cautious Whigs like Win- 
throp and Everett were inclined to keep quiet in view of Northern 
popular feeling, Webster "took a large view of things" and resolved, 
as Foote saw, to risk his reputation in advocating the only practicable 
solution. Not only was Webster thoroughly familiar with the facts, 
but he was pre-eminently logical and, as Calhoun had admitted, once 
convinced, "he cannot look truth in the face and oppose it by argu- 
ments". 72 He therefore boldly faced the truth that the Wilmot Pro- 
viso (as it proved later) was needless, and would irritate Southern 
Union men and play into hands of disunionists who frankly desired 
to exploit this "insult" to excite secession sentiment. In a like case 
ten years later, "the Republican party took precisely the same ground 
held by Mr. Webster in 1850 and acted from the motives that inspired 
the 7th of March speech". 73 

71 Writings and Speeches, X. 57; "Notes for the Speech," 281-291; Win- 
throp MSS., Apr. 3. 

72 Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372. 

73 Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271. 



28 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 



Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly dan- 
gerous Texas boundary situation ( which incidentally narrowed slave 
territory) was as consistent with his national Union policy, as his 
desires for California's admission as a free state and for prohibition 
of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia were in accord with his 
opposition to slavery. Seeing both abolitionists and secessionists 
threatening the Union, he rebuked both severely for disloyalty to 
their "constitutional obligations", while he pleaded for a more con- 
ciliatory attitude, for faith and charity rather than "heated imagina- 
tions". The only logical alternative to the union policy was dis- 
union, advocated alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern se- 
cessionists. "The Union . . . was thought to be in danger, and 
devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men to yield . . . where 
nothing else could have so inclined them'', was Lincoln's luminous 
defense of the Compromise in his debate with Douglas. 74 

Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of 
persons held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was in 
accord with a deep and statesmanlike conviction that "obedience to es- 
tablished government . . . is a Christian duty", the seat of law is 
"the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the universe"." Of- 
fensive as this law was to the North, the only logical alternatives were 
to fulfil or to annul the Constitution. Webster chose to risk his repu- 
tation ; the extreme abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as- 
his opponents later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the 
principle", "resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God", threat- 
ened the Constitution. "He . . . addressed himself, therefore, to 
the duty of calling the American people back from revolutionary 
theories to . . . submission to authority." 7 " As in 1830 against 
Haynes, so in 1850 against Calhoun and disunion, Webster stood not 
as "a Massachusetts man. but as an American", for "the pres- 
ervation of the Union"." In both speeches he held that he was act- 
ing no! for Massachusetts, but for the "whole country" ( 1830). 
"the good of the whole" ( 1850). His devotion to the Union and 
his intellectual balance led him to reject the impatience, bitterness, 



:< Works, II. 202-203. 

" Writings and Speeches, XVI. 580-581. 

"Seward, K w kt, HI. 111-116. 

:T Writings and Speeches, X. 57, 97. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 29 

and disunion sentiments of abolitionists and secessionists, and to work 
on longer lines. "We must wait for the slow progress of moral causes", 
a doctrine already announced in 1840, he reiterated in 1850, — "the effect 
of moral causes, though sure is slow." 78 

IV. 

The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a result of 
his speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious Northerners natur- 
ally hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on 
fugitive slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred and 
profane history in the epithets current in that "era of warm journal- 
istic manners" ; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one an- 
other that they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man 
save Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for 
months. On the other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and 
confidence of leaders and common men North and South, and the tre- 
mendous influence of his personality and "unanswerable" arguments 
eventually swung the North for the Compromise. From Boston came 
prompt expressions of "entire concurrence" in his speech by 800 rep- 
resentative men, including George Ticknor, William H. Prescott, 
Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President Sparks and Professor Felton 
of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart, and Emerson of Andover, 
and other leading professional, literary, and business men. Similar 
addresses were sent to him from about the same number of men in 
New York, from supporters in Newburyport, Medford, Kennebeck 
River, Philadelphia, the Detroit Common Council, Manchester, New 
Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in Salisbury. His old Boston Con- 
gressional district triumphantly elected Eliot, one of Webster's most 
loyal supporters, by a vote of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner. 788 
The Massachusetts legislature overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to 
instruct Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores of unpub- 
lished letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the 
Library of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all 
sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse Web- 

™Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65. 

1da Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and between black 
lines, Liberator, Sept. 20. 



30 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

ster's entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts that as 
a result of the speech, "disunion stock is already below par". 79 "You 
have performed the responsible duties of a national Senator", 
wrote General Dearborn. "I thank you because you did not speak 
upon the subject as a Massachusetts man", said Reverend Thomas 
Worcester of Boston, an overseer of Harvard. "Your speech has 
saved the Union", was the verdict of Barker of Pennsylvania, a man 
not of Webster's party. s " "The Union threatened . . . you have 
come to the rescue, and all disinterested lovers of that Union must 
rally round you", wrote Wainwright of New York. In Alabama, 
Reverend J. W. Allen recognized the "comprehensive and self-for- 
getting spirit of patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed, would 
save the Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the Nash- 
ville Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for 
the preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and 
Greensboro in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia. 81 "The 
preservation of the Union is the only safety-valve. . On Webster de- 
pends the tranquility of the country", says an anonymous writer from 
Charleston, a native of Massachusetts and former pupil of Webster. SJ 
Poinsett and Francis Lieber, South Carolina Unionists, expressed like 
views. Si The growing influence of the speech is testified to in letters 
from all sections. Linus Child of Lowell finds it modifying his own 
previous opinions and believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it 
will be approved by a large majority of the people of Massachusetts". 84 
"Upon sober second thought, our people will generally coincide with 
your views", wrote ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of 
Boston. 86 "Every day adds to the number of those who agree with 
you", is the confirmatory testimony of Dana, trustee of Andover and 
former president of Dartmouth."' "The effect of your speech begins 
to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of Boston. sT Mayor Huntington 

"Mar. 10. MS., "Private," to Governor Clifford 

*".\lar 11, Apr. 13. Webster papers, N. 11. Hist. Sue., cited hereafter as 
" N. H.". 

" Mar. 11. 25, 22, 17. 2b, 28. Greenough Collection, hereafter as "(.reenough. ' 

"Mav 20. XU. 

"Apr. 19, Maj l N'.H. 

•* Apr. 1. I rreenough. 

" II rUings and Speeches, XVIII. 357. 

"Apr. 19. N'.H. 

,T June 12 X.H. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 31 

of Salem at first felt the speech to be too Southern; but "subsequent 
events at North and South have entirely satisfied me that you were 
right . . . and vast numbers of others here in Massachusetts were 
wrong." "The change going on in me has been going on all around 
me." "You saw farther ahead than the rest or most of us and had 
the courage and patriotism to stand upon the true ground." 88 This 
significant inedited letter is but a specimen of the change of attitude 
manifested in hundreds of letters from "slow and cautious Whigs". 89 
One of these, Edward Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude 
on Texas and the fugitive slave bill, could not "entirely concur" in 
the Boston letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to 
carry the weight of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as 
you justly said," he wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man." 
This probably gives the position taken at first by a good many mod- 
erate anti-slavery men. Everett's later attitude is likewise typical of 
a change in New England. He wrote in 1851 that Webster's speech 
"more than any other cause, contributed to avert the catastrophe", 
and was "a practical basis for the adjustment of controversies, which 
had already gone far to dissolve the Union". 90 

Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses 
that Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own 
might have been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had feared 
in the month preceding v\ T ebster's speech a "disruption of the Union" 
with "no chance of escaping a conflict of blood". He felt that the 
censures of Webster were undeserved, that Webster was not merely 
right, but had "power he can exercise at the North, beyond any 
other man", and that "all that is of value will declare in favor of the 
great principles of your late Union speech". 91 "Its tranquilizing effect 
upon public opinion has been wonderful" ; "it has almost the unanimous 
support of this community", wrote the New York philanthropist Min- 
turn. 92 "The speech made a powerful impression in this state . . . 

88 Dec. 13. N.H. 

89 Writings and Speeches, XVI. 582. 

90 Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1851; Curtis, Life, II. 
580; Everett's Memoir; Webster's Works (1851), I. clvii. 

91 Apr. 17, to Webster. Liberator, Dec. 27, 1850, May 8, 1856. Curtis, Life, 
II. 429 n. 

92 Apr. N.H. 



32 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

Men feel they can stand on it with security." 98 In Cincinnati, Balti- 
more, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsfield (with only one excep- 
tion) the speech was found "wise and patriotic". 94 The sender of a 
resolution of approval from the grand jury of the United States court 
at Indianapolis says that such judgment is almost universal. 95 "It 
is thought you may save the country . . . you may keep us still united", 
wrote Thornton of Memphis, who soberly records the feeling of 
thoughtful men that the Southern purpose of disunion was stronger 
than appeared in either newspapers or political gatherings. 90 "Your 
speech has disarmed — has quieted the South; 97 has rendered invalu- 
able service to the harmony and union of the South and the North'*. ^ 
"I am confident of the higher approbation, not of a single section of 
the Union, but of all sections", wrote a political opponent in Washing- 
ton. 99 

The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the 
Nashville Convention has been shown above. 100 

All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and grow- 
ing backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only states- 
manlike and practicable way to save the Union". "To you, more 
than to any other statesman of modern times, do the people of this 
country owe their national feeling which we trust is to save this Union 
in this its hour of trial", was the judgment of "the neighbors", the 
plain farmers of Webster's old New Hampshire home. 11 ' 1 Outside of 
the Abolition and Free Soil press, the growing tendency in newspapers, 
like that of their readers, was to support Webster's logical position. 102 

Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may 
have been, they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in 
the anti-slavery press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval 
both concur in recognizing the widespread effect of the speech. "No 

" Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. N.H. 

"Mar. 15, 28. N.H. 

"June 10. Greenough, 

** Mar. 28. Greenough. 

"H. I. Anderson. Tenn.. Apr. 8. Greenough. 

" Nelson. Va.. May 2. N.H. 

" Mar. 8. Greenough. 

"•Pp. 17-20. 

""August. 1850; 127 signatures. N.H. 

'"Orb. Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-158. 



And the Secession Movement, 1850 33 

speech ever delivered in Congress produced ... so beneficial a change 
of opinion. The change of feeling and temperament wrought in Con- 
gress by this speech is miraculous." 103 

The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion 
is substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina, Cobb 
of Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by Stephens's 
mature judgment of "the profound sensation upon the public mind 
throughout the Union made by Webster's 7th of March speech. The 
friends of the Union under the Constitution were strengthened in 
their hopes and inspired with renewed energies." 1 " 4 In 1866 Foote 
wrote, "The speech produced beneficial effects everywhere." "His state- 
ment of facts was generally looked upon as unanswerable; his argu- 
mentative conclusions appeared to be inevitable; his conciliatory tone 
. . . softened the sensibilities of all patriots." 105 "He seems to have 
gauged more accurately [than most] the grave dangers which threat- 
ened the republic and . . . the fearful consequences which must fol- 
low its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later and wiser judgment. 106 
"The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in 1899, "seems to be 
coming to the conclusion that Webster differed from the friends of 
freedom of his time not in a weaker moral sense, but only in a larger, 
and profounder prophetic vision." "He saw what no other man saw, 
the certainty of civil war. I was one of those who . . . judged him 
severely, but I have learned better." "I think of him now ... as the 
orator who bound fast with indissoluble strength the bonds of union." 107 

Modern writers, North and South — Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. 
Smith, Merriam, for instance 108 — now recognize the menace of dis- 
union in 1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union. 
Rhodes, though condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave 
bill, recognizes that the speech was one of the few that really altered 
public opinion and won necessary Northern support for the Compro- 

10 * New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond Whig, 
Mar. 12 ; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18 ; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25 ; Boston Watchman and 
Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1. 

104 War between the States, II. 211. 

™War of the Rebellion (1866), pp. 130-131. 

106 Slave Power, II. 246. 

107 Scribner's Magazine XXVI. 84. 

108 Garrison, Westward Expansion, pp. 327-332 ; Chadwick, The Causes of 
the Civil War, pp. 49-51; Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. 9; Merriam, Life of 
Bowles, I. 81. 



34 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

mise. "We see now that in the War of the Rebellion his principles 
were mightier than those of Garrison.'' "It was not the Liberty or 
Abolitionist party, but the Union party that won." 109 

Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North pre- 
ponderance in population, voting power, production, and transporta- 
tion ; new party organization; and convictions which made man-power 
and economic resources effective. The Northern lead of four million 
people in 1850 had increased to seven millions by 1860. In 1850, each 
section had thirty votes in the Senate; in 1860, the North had a ma- 
jority of six, due to the admission of California, Oregon, and Minne- 
sota. In the House of Representatives, the North had added seven to 
her majority. The Union states and territories built during the decade 
15,000 miles of railroad, to 7,000 or 8,000 in the eleven seceding states. 
In shipping, the North in 1860 built about 800 vessels to the seceding 
states' 200. In 1860, in the eleven most important industries for war, 
Chadwick estimates that the Union states produced $735,500,000; the 
seceding states $75,250,000. "a manufacturing productivity eleven 
times as great for the North as for the South". 110 In general, during 
the decade, the census figures for 1860 show that since 1850 the North 
had increased its man-power, transportation, and economic production 
from two to fifty times as fast as the South, and that in 1860 the Union 
States were from two to twelve times as powerful as the seceding states. 

Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had 
some basis for thinking that the North would let the "erring sisters 
depart in peace" in 1850. Within the next ten years, however, there 
came a decisive change. The North, exasperated by the Kansas- 
Nebraska Act of 1854. the high-handed acts of Southerners in Kan- 
sas m 1856, and the Dred Scott dictum of the Supreme Court in 1857, 
fell that these things amounted to a repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
and the opening Up of the territory to slavery. In 1860 Northern 
conviction, backed by an effective, thorough party platform on a Union 
basis, swept the free states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional Union" 
party that accepted the Compromise and arrested secession in the 
South; and Webster, foreseeing a "remodelling of parties", had 



•"Rhodes, I. 157. 161. . 

"•Preliminary Report, Eighth Census. 1860; Chadwick, Causes of the Cwtl 
War, p. 28. 






And the Secession Movement, 1850 35 

prophesied that "there must be a Union party". 111 Webster's spirit 
and speeches and his strengthening of federal power through Supreme 
Court cases won by his arguments had helped to furnish the conviction 
which underlay the Union Party of 1860 and 1864. His consistent 
opposition to nullification and secession, and his appeal to the Union 
and to the Constitution during twenty years preceding the Civil War — 
from his reply to Hayne to his seventh of March speech — had developed 
a spirit capable of making economic and political power effective. 

Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in manufacturing, 
farming, and material prosperity, may well remember that in his mind, 
and more slowly in the minds of the North, economic progress went 
hand in hand with the development of union and of liberty secured by 
law. 

Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the per- 
sonal character of the man are already disappearing as fact replaces 
fiction, as "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase of Wendell 
Phillips. There is nothing about Daniel Webster to be hidden. Not 
moral blindness but moral insight and sound political principles reveal 
themselves to the reader of Webster's own words in public speech 
and unguarded private letter. One of those great men who disdained 
to vindicate himself, he does not need us but we need him and his 
vision that Liberty comes through Union, and healing through coopera- 
tion, not through hate. 

Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850 
to 1860 or to its development in "imponderables", Webster's policy 
and his power over men's thoughts and deeds were essential factors 
in the ultimate triumph of the Union, which would have been at least 
dubious had secession been attempted in 1850. It was a soldier, not 
the modern orator, who first said that "Webster shotted our guns". A 
letter to Senator Hoar from another Union soldier says that he kept up 
his heart as he paced up and down as sentinel in an exposed place by 
repeating over and over, "Liberty and Union now and forever, one and 
inseparable". 112 Hosmer tells us that he and his boyhood friends of 
the North in 1861 "did not argue much the question of the right of 
secession", but that it was the words of Webster's speeches, "as 

111 Oct. 2, 1850. Writings and Speeches, XVI. 568-569. 

115 Scribner, XXVI. 84; American Law Review, XXXV. 804. 



36 Webster's Seventh of March Speech 

familiar to us as the sentences of the Lord's prayer and scarcely less 
consecrated, . . . with which we sprang to battle". Those boys were 
not ready in 1850. The decisive human factors in the Civil War were 
the men bred on the profound devotion to the Union which Webster 
shared with others equally patriotic, but less profoundly logical, less 
able to mould public opinion. Webster not only saw the vision him- 
self ; he had the genius to make the plain American citizen see that 
liberty could come through union and not through disunion. More- 
over, there was in Webster and the Compromise of 1850 a spirit of 
conciliation, and therefore there was on the part of the Xorth a belief 
that they had given the South a "square deal", and a corresponding in- 
dignation at the attempts in the next decade to expand slavery by 
violating the Compromises of 1820 and 1850. So. by 1860, the decisive 
border states and Northwest were ready to stand behind the Union. 
When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in the 
Northwest, and bred on Webster's doctrine, — "the Union is para- 
mount", — accepted for the second time the Republican nomination and 
platform, he summed up the issues of the war, as he had done before, 
in Webster's words. Lincoln, who had grown as masterly in his choice 
■ it' words as he had become profound in his vision of issues, used in 
1864 not the more familiar and rhetorical phrases of the reply to 
1 layne, but the briefer, more incisive form, "Liberty and Union", of 
Webster's "honest, truth-telling. Union speech" on the 7th of March, 

1850. 1 ' 1 

Herbert Darling Foster. 

"* Nicolay and Hay, IX. 76. 



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